


Fluffy Pink Armor Against the Universe

by Caedmon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Headcanon, Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6185722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmon/pseuds/Caedmon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s an impulse purchase. As much of an impulse as asking her aboard had been. </i>
</p><p><i>He doesn’t think about it much, really. He just allows himself to be ruled by the swirling eddies of emotion and sensation that come part and parcel with his shipmate - something he’s finding himself doing more and more now that he’s let one Rose Tyler into his life. He’s always found that if he thinks about something for too long, he loses momentum. With Rose, he doesn’t think. He </i>feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fluffy Pink Armor Against the Universe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunaseemoony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunaseemoony/gifts).



> This fic came about in a number of ways.  
> -First, there is a pink blanket that the Doctor bought Rose that's made an appearance in several of my fics. I love that particular idea, and have intended to write it for a while. This is the manifestation of that headcanon.  
> -Second, it's the lovely and wonderful lunaseemoony's birthday! A little birdy told me she likes fluffy things, and what's more fluffy than a big pink blanket?  
> -Third, the TimePetalsPrompts ficlet prompt this week was 'in between episodes', which was what this fic was going to be anyway. So here you are! :)
> 
> Beta'd by sequencefairy, tenroseforeverandever and crazygirlne. Thank you for making me scrap what needed to be scrap, add what needed to be added, and keep what needed to be kept. 
> 
> The usual disclaimers:  
> I own nothing. If I did, I'd be rich and would probably own a green dress and a monkey.  
> Come talk to me! caedmonfaith.tumblr.com

It’s an impulse purchase. As much of an impulse as asking her aboard had been. 

He doesn’t think about it much, really. He just allows himself to be ruled by the swirling eddies of emotion and sensation that come part and parcel with his shipmate - something he’s finding himself doing more and more now that he’s let one Rose Tyler into his life. He’s always found that if he thinks about something for too long, he loses momentum. With Rose, he doesn’t think. He _feels_.

It’s pale pink and impossibly soft, just like her. There is a pattern of squares - almost waffled-looking in appearance - but he doesn’t feel any ridges or bumps when he runs his calloused hand over the soft, alien wool. All he feels is the silken slide of the material against his roughened skin. 

They’ve just left 1987 and guilt gnaws at him, constant and relentless. His behavior in her past was inexcusable, unforgivable. He was abrasive, his words and actions like sandpaper against her fragile human emotions. But Rose, his sweet Rose, forgave him, undeserving bastard that he is. He has learned, over these past weeks traveling with her, what compassion looks like. 

It looks like Rose Tyler. His precious girl. 

She deserves something as soft as she is, something that will caress her as he will never ( _can_ never). She needs something that will comfort her when he is an utter arsehole (as he is sure to be; what else can he be?) and perhaps remind her that he is not always a prick, that he does care about her. 

This purchase isn’t entirely about her comfort, he realizes. It’s also about him needing to ensure her comfort and happiness. Because ensuring her happiness is paramount to ensuring his own; if she’s not happy with him, she’ll leave. And if she leaves… 

He can’t even complete that thought. 

“How much?” he asks the vendor.

“Which one?” 

The Doctor holds up the pink blanket.

“Fifty-four credits.”

It’s an outrageous sum, and he shouldn’t pay it. He should tell the vendor to fuck off, or at least begin the process of haggling. _Fifty-four credits!?_ That’s mad.

“Here.” He hands over the credit stick without another word, and the vendor passes the parcel to the Doctor with a smirk. 

He’s been an easy mark and he knows it. He curses himself as he walks away with the pink blanket in a (blessedly) opaque bag.

~*~O~*~

The blanket never makes it to Rose’s room. 

They’ve spent evenings together before, the occasional dinner together becoming chats while the Doctor tinkered under the console, then morphing into occasional films in the library, and these evenings are increasing in frequency (much to the Doctor’s delight). By the time he buys the blanket, they’ve spent the last three nights in front of the fire together, watching telly or reading books. 

He presents it to her in the library the very night he buys it, the fourth evening in a row they’ve spent together. She immediately stands up with it, spreading it out wide - almost as wide as her smile - and twirls around until it is wrapped around her like a fluffy pink cocoon. The blanket is bigger than he thought it was - much bigger, actually, big enough to cover a bed if she wanted it to - and she’s comically lumpy in places once she gets herself fully wrapped, like a cottony pink mummy. 

“How do I look?” she asks, cocking one heavily-padded, pink hip to the side.

“Pink and comfortable,” he answers honestly. 

She giggles helplessly and collapses beside him, wrapped in the blanket from head to toe. Somehow, despite being fully encapsulated in pink fluff, she has defied physics and her hands are free. He finds himself sitting in the corner of the couch with an armful of happy Rose Tyler, bundled in a gift he has given her. And when she’s not giggling, she’s murmuring thanks into his shoulder. 

One of her slender arms has reached across his chest, and her delicate fingers rest over his right heart. He hopes that she doesn’t realize that the galloping beat she must feel, brought on by her proximity and touch, is unusual. 

He turns on the telly, but after a few moments, he’s about to explode from the tension and simply must do something. 

“I’ll just bet you’re about to freeze, what with your arm and head poking out of all that warmth.”

Rose laughs when he wrestles a couple of folds of the blanket over her head and covers her beautiful face, mussing her blonde hair. When she pulls the blanket back off of her head and mock-glares at him with laughter in her eyes, static electricity has her hair sticking up in every direction and laughter rumbles his chest, his mirth vibrating both of their bodies. 

“I had no idea Time Lords were so silly,” she accuses, her tongue between her teeth.

“Only this Time Lord,” he replies with a goofy grin. “And only for you.” 

~*~O~*~

Rose continues to wrap up in the blanket like a pink burrito and prop herself against the Doctor every night for months. When she falls asleep, all snug and bundled, he carries her to her bed - still wrapped in her blanket - and lays her there like the precious gift that she is, staying only as long as he dares, just long enough to make sure that she is comfortable and wants for nothing.

Neither of them are ever surprised when the blanket is waiting for them on the back of the couch the next night. 

It becomes just another one of the “Things They Do,” the only one that they do with any timed predictability. Every night, they’re together in one corner of the couch of the Doctor’s library: the Doctor and his precious, pink companion curled against him, swaddled in the pink blanket. 

The Doctor treasures every millisecond that he has Rose Tyler snuggled against him, safe. Some nights he selfishly keeps her there long after she falls asleep against him, just basking in the pleasure of her: the gentle cadence of her respiration, the occasional soft twitch of her fingers against his jumper, the light snore she would deny to her last breath. He would concede the point, of course, but only with raised hands and a knowing smile that let her know that he wasn’t actually relinquishing a damned thing when he backed down and let her win - that he was right and he knew it, and he looked forward to another playful spar over the ridiculous topic of her snoring habits soon. 

_Domestics_ , he thinks with a smile.

This is their life, the life that they have made together. He would never have chosen this life, he would never have imagined it - but, now that it is his life, he wouldn't trade it for anything. 

Rose has looked as far into him as she can without actually entering his mind - and hasn’t flinched. She’s seen how deeply he is wounded, how broken he’s been, and how far he can descend into darkness. She’s taken his pain as her own. She didn’t close her eyes to the truth of his anger, or his pain; she simply wrapped her arms around him and set about healing him. 

She knows that he’s capable of great love, and she also knows that he tries to hide vulnerability behind a bright, false smile. The Doctor wishes that he could be the man she wants, the man she deserves. All he can do is give her his absolute best and strive towards being the rest of what she needs. 

By some miracle, it’s more than enough for his Rose. She sees the ugliest bits of him, and she doesn’t look away. 

He loves her with a wild abandon that frightens him with its intensity. 

~*~O~*~

He thinks of her as _his_ now, and she really is. He doesn’t bother to ask himself when he began to think of her this way. He just does. She is his friend, his companion, his _salvation_. She’s just... _his_. 

It’s not a matter of claim or ownership. It’s not a statement of possession. It’s nothing so apelike as that. It’s not a case of the male seeing the female, desiring her, claiming her and then, Bob’s your uncle, you have a new couple on your hands. No, that’s not it at all. 

This…this is much more primal, more basic, and yet infinitely more complicated. It’s a matter of need. He needs her, and when he calls her "his," he’s acknowledging that the only way he can. It’s a statement of necessity. He needs the pink bundle beside him. He needs her, but he doesn’t possess her. He never could. 

It _becomes_ a statement of possession, however, when they meet Captain Jack Harkness, four months, two weeks, and three days after they leave 1987. Four months, two weeks, and two days after he buys Rose the blanket. The Doctor feels very confident that he made himself absolutely clear to Harkness - the defrocked captain is to stay the hell away from his Rose. He could not have been any more overt in his claim to Rose if he’d pissed on her leg like some sort of animal marking his territory. 

Now, two days (and one overnight jail stay) after the dance in the console room, Rose has invited Jack into the library, to share their time. _Their time!_ This is the time she spends with him, alone, every night! The Doctor is wounded, he is angry. He had thought that, even if he had to share his Rose’s attentions with this pretty-boy American during the day, at the very least he would have her in the evenings. At the bare minimum, he’d have these quiet moments with her, alone, and they’d be together as they always had been. 

Rose has gone and ruined that, and he’s furious. But more than that, he’s crushed. 

And he’s sure he deserves it. He’s presumed too much. 

He almost decides not to go to the library tonight, but the TARDIS makes him. 

Once there, he takes up his regular position on the couch. Jack plops himself into an armchair by the fire (the one that used to be _his_ favorite, he notes with no small amount of bitterness, nevermind that he’s preferred the couch since Rose came along), and Rose comes in behind them in her cutest pair of jimjams. The ones she bought on Gibber 4, the ones with the little bananas on them - but not many, because there’s not all that much fabric to work with in the little shorts and vest top. 

Lecherous old bastard that he is, they’re his favorite pair of her jimjams. 

His heart sinks - and he simultaneously fights a growl - when he notices that Jack seems appreciative of them as well. 

Rose doesn’t seem to notice any of this interplay. She comes straight over to him, pulling her pink blanket from its usual spot on the back of the couch. He reaches for the remote, hoping that he has pleased enough gods in his travels that she will wrap herself into the cocoon she usually does and still sit with him, and he can go ahead with his usual routine.

Rose does not stick to the usual routine. 

She sinks down next to him and pulls the blanket over herself, covering part of him. Her right arm loops through the hook of his left elbow, her bare legs curl up under her, against his denim-clad legs, and as always, her left hand rests over his right heart. She lays her head on his shoulder, and he mentally prays thanks to fifteen different gods. 

There is no barrier between them this time, beyond their clothes. The cocoon isn’t only around her. The cocoon includes him, and it is keeping the rest of the world out. 

If the dance in the console room was the Doctor’s way of letting Jack know _she is not for you_ , this is Rose telling Jack very, very clearly, _I am not for you_. 

The Doctor spends the rest of the evening in a positively ebullient mood, drunk on the woman snuggled next to him, hardly noticing whatever is on the screen. 

Rose never goes back to wrapping herself in a cocoon again after that night, and the Doctor surrenders his own barrier of a leather jacket. With that gone, he can feel every pulse beneath her skin, every tic of every muscle, every breath whooshing in and out of her lungs without any trouble, and it’s a heady feeling. 

Every night, when the three of them gather to watch telly, read, or just tell stories of their lives and adventures, Rose makes sure that the Doctor is always with her, at least partially under the blanket he bought her. Their fluffy pink armor against the universe. 

~*~O~*~

His regeneration has been hard on Rose. 

He didn’t tell her it was coming, a fact he deeply regrets now. She deserves better than his brooding and his secrets, and all he can do is hope that he’s more considerate in this new body. 

She seems to like him well enough, but he can feel her holding back. She’d reached the point of abandon with him before he regenerated, of complete trust, and she’s withdrawn a bit, he can feel it. She’s just not there anymore. He won’t tell her what happened to Jack, he won’t tell her what happened to the Daleks, and that lack of disclosure has damaged her faith in him. 

Having Cassandra enter her mind without permission and force her to kiss him didn’t help, although he certainly didn’t mind. The latter, that is. He wasn’t at all happy about the first part. Rather furious about it, to be honest. He’d hoped against hope that the kiss was real and thought it might be for just a brief, shining moment. Finding out that it had been Cassandra the whole time, having his hopes dashed, had made him even angrier. 

When Rose comes into the library that night, she rolls herself into the burrito for the first time in months, but at least she curls up next to him. He doesn’t question her, not even when her hand doesn’t make its appearance on his chest as it always does. That doesn’t stop him from slinging his arm around her, protectively. 

Cassandra violated her today, invaded her, and he’s still angry. Feeling her warmth, the silken softness of the blanket that swaddles her, comforts him. 

“Doctor?”

“Hmm?”

“What happened to Jack?”

He takes a deep breath and tries to think of evasive maneuvers. He doesn’t want to tell her, doesn’t want to burden her with the truth. But he needs her trust and whatever love she will afford him more than he needs the air that fills his lungs, and there’s no good option here. 

She will find out someday, anyway, somehow, so telling her what actually happened is the lesser of the two evils. 

“I don’t know exactly what happened to him, Rose, except that he died and you brought him back to life.”

“I did _what?_ ” she demanded, sitting up and away from him. 

“I told you that I took the time vortex into myself and no one’s meant to do that. Well, I took it into myself after taking it out of you. You were the Bad Wolf, Rose. You became a goddess, a goddess of time and space. You saved me - said you wanted me safe. You destroyed the Dalek fleet and brought Jack back to life.”

“Then why isn’t he here?” she demands to know.

He regrets his next words before they’re even out of his mouth. “He feels wrong to me now, Rose. Like sandpaper on raw skin. I can’t...I can’t be around him. Plus, I had to get you out of there.”

“So you just...you _left_ him there?”

“I had to, Rose, don’t you understand?” His words and voice are near to pleading, and he doesn’t even care. She has to understand, he _needs_ her to understand - she is his priority; she always has been and will always be his priority. 

“He was our friend! He was like my _brother_ and you _left_ him there on that horrible place, full of dead bodies...oh!” 

Rose stands up and moves to run, the blanket tangling around her legs as she tries to get as far away from him as she can. He reaches out to her but she smacks his hands away with a sound that’s something like a cross between a hiss and a snarl. 

She flees the room, crying, leaving him there, alone and bereft. The blanket lies in a blameless, soft pink heap over his knee and by his foot. He picks it up, pulls it to his face and, unable to help himself, takes a deep breath of her scent. Then he curses his own stupidity. 

~*~O~*~

The Doctor has always found that the way to Rose’s heart is through her laughter, and this body is a bit more charming than the last. He wins her forgiveness in a matter of days with some deep, sincere talks and the shameless use of the brown eyes he just happens to know that she likes as much, if not more, than she’d liked the blue. By the time he hands over the ten quid she won off of him in a game he’s rigged to lose, he’s firmly back in her good graces. 

She does something that night that she’s never done: she opened the blanket partway, allowing herself to snuggle up to him, but not allowing him in. 

The Doctor takes this overture of goodwill, and he takes it gladly. 

Then, the very next day, Mickey calls. They find themselves at Deffry Vale School with him teaching and Rose working in the cafeteria. They run into Sarah Jane, and everything goes all pear-shaped. The Doctor manages to fuck it all up, six ways from Sunday, and then to cap it all off, he invites Mickey on board to travel with them. 

Before he even has a chance to talk to Rose, before he’s had much of a chance to do anything but set the coordinates while Rose and Mickey change clothes, they’re landing on a spaceship three thousand years in the future and he’s being kissed by a French courtier. 

Rose’s blanket doesn't appear in his library that night, nor does she. He needs her, but he figures she is very tired from the last couple of days. She seems fine the next day, and he is relieved.

She still doesn’t show up the following night, and neither does the pink blanket. It is only then that he realizes what he has done, that he is being punished. His fear and anger almost sends him to her door, pounding on it and demanding that she join him at once, that she come be with him, curled at his side where she belongs. But he doesn’t do anything quite so rude as that - he practices just a bit of the self-control that was lacking when he stood outside a chippy and all but told Rose he was in love with her, that was still missing the very next day when he allowed himself to kiss and then be led away by Reinette Poisson.

Still, the absence of her and her blanket in his library hits him like a physical blow. He’s grown accustomed to her presence - the little noises she makes, her scent wafting around him - and the loss of those things is unnerving. He’d be, well, not _content_ but a little _comforted_ , by just the blanket. He’s grown used to at least having some concrete evidence of her around. Now he has nothing. He is dismal without her.

During the day and in front of Mickey, she acts as if there is nothing amiss. She would rather kiss a slitheen than admit she’s been cut so deep, but the Doctor knows what her absence means. Oh, he knows. And he plans to make it up to her. Someway, somehow. He’ll make her understand what she means to him. 

~*~O~*~

She is still in her maid’s uniform when she falls into his arms, sobbing brokenly. They’ve just flown back into their own universe and he’s sealed the crack, leaving Mickey behind permanently. She’ll never see her best mate again, and the knowledge seems to hit her all at once. She is weak against him, her body sagging, and he doesn’t think about what he does before he does it. He just bends and lowers himself, hooks his arms behind her knees and lifts her, bridal style, then carries her into the library. 

“He’s gone,” she sobs into his shoulder.

“I know, Rose.”

“He’s gone and left me.”

 _He’s left you with me. Is that so bad?_ He wants to ask, but doesn’t.

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” he says instead, murmuring into her hair, brushing his lips there in what some would consider a kiss - and he might, too, if he were more daring. 

He sits on the couch, draping her across his lap and tucking her head into the crook of his neck. 

“Let it out, Rose. I’m right here.”

She cries, wetting the shoulder of his tuxedo, her arms thrown around his shoulders. 

“Don’t leave me, Doctor,” she cries.

“Never, Rose Tyler,” he assures her. “I never could.”

“I’m cold,” she says, out of the blue, and he doesn’t even raise his head, simply lifts his hand from its place at her back and reaches for the blanket. It hasn’t been there for several nights, but he doesn’t doubt its presence now; it’ll be there, on the back of the couch, waiting to comfort Rose, just as it was purchased to do all those months ago. 

Letting go of her for just a moment, he tucks it around the both of them, encasing them in their own fuzzy, pink world. He uses it as a downy shell to keep them safe from everything outside. Nothing can get to her - he simply won’t allow it. Nor will he allow anything to come between them again. There will be no more cocooning. 

“I want my Mum,” she snuffles, and his hearts stop.

“Rose, no...” he chokes out.

She draws back from him, and his hearts break a little more. Her face is puffy, splotchy, red in places that should never be, and he wonders suddenly if this is what she looked like after France, if she looked like this after he broke her heart, if Mickey comforted her just as he is. He curses himself again and swears to be a better man for her.

If she’ll let him. 

“Please, Rose…”

The penny drops and her eyes widen. “No, Doctor! No, please don’t leave me there! No!” Her arms fly around his neck again and she’s squeezing the breath out of him, but that’s alright because he has a respiratory bypass and besides, he’s squeezing her rather hard, too.

“Never, Rose Tyler. I’ll never leave you behind, you hear me? I’m keeping you with me until you demand to leave, and even then I’ll try to talk you out of it.”

Rose huffs a laugh on a watery breath. “Won’t ever happen. Never getting rid of me.”

He closes his eyes and begs every deity he can think of to let her words be true. 

~*~O~*~

Their positions on the couch have become more varied after their visit to Pete’s World, with Rose sometimes now throwing her legs across his lap as if she owns him. 

She does, of course, but that’s not quite the point. 

Usually, when she does that, he allows himself the luxury of sliding his hand in an idle little circuit from the back of her knee down to her ankle and back up, his hand creating a little moving lump under the soft pink fabric of their blanket, his fingers sometimes doodling desultory little swirls while they watch whatever she’s decided should be on telly that night. The blanket will be tossed over the two of them almost as an afterthought or just out of force of habit, but it’s there nonetheless. Rose will recline with her back to the opposite end of the couch and the popcorn bowl will rest on her lap, and they’ll both reach in there without looking. Every now and again, one will get the other’s attention and toss a fat, white kernel towards the other’s mouth, laughing and enjoying their friendship and unspoken love. 

Tonight, however...tonight is different. 

Today, Rose lost her face, and the Doctor can’t keep his hands off of what has been restored. The blanket - their old shield - is tucked tightly around them to ward off any evil that may try to attack. The celebratory atmosphere of the coronation is long gone, the adrenaline of another narrow escape has worn off, and the Doctor reverently strokes the thing he almost lost while Rose clutches his shoulders.

“I’m so sorry, Rose,” he whispers, his voice fervent, near to pleading. He runs his fingers along her forehead, down her jaw, his eyes following their path.

“Doctor,” she begins.

“I could have lost you,” and he sounds broken, desolate. It’s easy to hear what it would have done to him to lose her.

“I knew you would come for me,” she assures him, devoted. “I never doubted.”

“I was so afraid, Rose. I’ve never come closer to losing you.” His fingertips trace the apples of her cheeks, her eyebrows. “I’ve never been so afraid.”

“But you didn’t.”

“What if I had?” he asks, and the question is fervid, intense. He cradles her face between his long-fingered hands and looks into her eyes, and his voice drops to merely a whisper. “How would I live without you, Rose? How could I ever?”

“You don’t-”

His kiss stops her mouth.

~*~O~*~

The first time they make love is under the blanket.

Well, sort of. 

They’ve just come back from Krop Tor, and the time for pretending is past. It’s been so long that they’ve both forgotten when they stopped denying that they were a couple, when the assumption was made. Now, it’s time for them stop denying it to themselves. 

Clothes come off, but the blanket stays on while they give themselves to each other beneath it.

They don’t say much. They don’t have to. They’ve promised each other forever long ago, even if they’ve only admitted it out loud less than a week before. Even if they still dare not call it “love.”

Words are redundant, anyhow. What could be said that could compare to the groundswell of emotion that moves both of them with the slide and grip of hands against bare skin? What pithy words could possibly measure against their staggering belief and trust in one another?

With glistening foreheads pressed together, bodies entwined, panting breaths intermingling, they barely notice as the blanket falls away. And as he slips deliciously into her, and they rock together in a physical affirmation of their devotion, they realize that’s alright. Eternity is shimmering all around, buffering and protecting them. They are confident in their safety - and in each other.

~*~O~*~

He doesn’t take her back to the library when they leave Canary Wharf; he takes her to their room. Wordlessly, they strip down to their pants and knickers, then he grabs the blanket and wraps it around both of them on the bed, tucking them in tight. Their arms and legs entwine, creating a Gordian knot of limbs; he is willingly and knowingly tying himself to her, both in the physical and metaphorical sense.

They don’t make love. This is much deeper than that. 

She’s lost so much today, but he nearly lost her again. He’ll never let her go. He’ll never let her out of his sight. Never again. 

She needs to know. He has to tell her, and there can be no more delay.

“Rose?”

“Hmm?”

She’s taking all of this remarkably well, and he’s so, so proud of her. 

“I know this is a bad time…”

She shakes her head from under his chin. “I chose this, Doctor. I chose you. It’ll be hard, but I barely saw her anymore anyway. Besides, I know she’s happy. She’s going to love living with Pete. And I’m sure you’ll figure out a way for me to speak to her sometimes.”

He’s sure he can, but he doesn’t want to think about that right now. He has other things on his mind. Things that can’t wait. 

“I love you, Rose Tyler.”

She starts to cry, pulling the edge of the blanket down to her face to cover it. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, alarmed.

“Nothing,” she says, still crying. “I just...I never thought you’d ever say it.”

“You didn’t think I loved you? How could you--”

“No, I didn’t think you’d ever man up and say it.”

“Oi!” He draws back to look at her with one corner of his mouth raised. She’s joking with him, even at a time like this, and marvels again that the universe created such a wonder as Rose Tyler, then saw fit to give her to him.

He tugs the blanket away from her face gently, and she looks up at red-rimmed eyes that he knows are only partially his fault. “I knew you loved me. Of course I knew. I’d suspected for a good while, then you bought me a fluffy pink blanket. Why do you think I’m so attached to this thing?”

“Oh, is that why then?” he asks, his eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, that’s why,” she answers, lip quirked. “That was my first proof that you loved me like I loved you.”

“‘Course I loved you. Was mad for you. Couldn’t admit it, though, so I bought you something to hold you close, to keep you warm even if I couldn’t.”

“You do all that now, though.”

“Now I do,” he confirms.

“I like it when you both do. Like now,” she sighs, snuggling into the blanket.

“You saying you love me, then?” His hearts are in his throat. Although she’s already said something very similar and he’s known the truth of what he’s asking for a long time, he needs to hear her say it. 

It takes several lifetimes and less than half of a second for her to answer. “Of course I love you, you plonker.” Her tongue comes out to the corner of her mouth, and he’s never been happier than he has in this exact moment. This shining, brilliant moment, wrapped in a coverlet with the love of all his lives.

“Marry me, Rose,” he says impulsively. He’s surprised to find he doesn’t want to take the words back.

“I’m sorry?” She sounds surprised enough for both of them.

“Marry me. I want to spend the rest of both of our lives together, and then some. I want the entire universe to know that we’re together, properly together and can never be divided. The-Doctor-And-Rose-Tyler as one cohesive unit. In love. And we are in love, aren’t we? I certainly love you madly, love you to distraction. You are my world, my universe, Rose. I want nothing more than you. I’ve never wanted anything in all of time and space as much as I want you by my side for the rest of eternity. And that’s saying something - you and I have seen eternity, haven’t we?” She opens her mouth to speak and he cuts her off. “Besides, don’t you think your mother would prefer if I made an honest woman of you?”

“Doctor, we’re naked in bed. Don’t go bringing my mother into this.”

“Fair point.”

“She would, though.”

“Well _now_ who’s bringing your mother into it?” He protests with a cheeky grin.

Rose giggles and he rolls her under him, further tangling her in his arms and legs and their blanket. He kisses the tip of her nose, giddy with relief, drunk on her love. 

“Will you? Marry me, that is.”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

**Author's Note:**

> *Bonus points if you get the 'green dress and monkey' reference.
> 
> This is based on an actual blanket, by the way...one that my husband got me for Christmas year before last. Mine is white and is my favorite blanket to wrap up in while I'm writing...I'm burrito'd in it as I write this!
> 
> Happy Birthday, Moony. I hope it's a wonderful day!!


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